Lethal Pursuit (13 page)

“You sure know how to lighten the mood.” He was still laughing at her. “You know what?”

“What?”

“When we get outta here, I’m taking you on a vacation.”

She liked the thought of that. Her last vacation had been a long weekend down to Miami from Hurlburt. And it had been completely forgettable. “Hmm. You’re paying, right?”

“Of course.”

“So that means you’ll probably expect me to put out, huh?” Her voice was rough and weak.

Another laugh. “Oh, believe me, I’ll make sure you
want
to put out. A lot. I’m real attentive.”

God, he was so freaking adorable. “I might be interested,” she said, playing it coy, loving the distraction of this whole conversation. She shifted gingerly and winced at the sudden stab of discomfort in her back. “Plus, last time I didn’t get to see the green footprint tattoos on your ass. You’ve got ’em, right?”

“Honey, I’m a PJ. And you’ll like my tat. It’s special.”

She bet it was. “So where do you have in mind?”

“Someplace warm. You said you want to scuba dive. Ever been to Hawaii?”

“No. Just California, Colorado, Texas, Florida, Germany and here.” Mostly military towns. Pretty sad, when she thought about it.

“Well, then I’ll take you to Kauai. It’s my favorite place in the world.”

She’d love to see it, especially with him. What was the harm in dreaming about it? “Okay, but now that you’ve brought it up, you’d better not renege on your offer.”

“Hey, I’m a man of my word,” he said, his tone full of mock insult. “And I’d never renege with you, since I’m already thinking about all the things I’m gonna do to you when we’re in bed together next time.”

They should not have affected her under the circumstances, but his words made her lower belly flip anyhow. “Why, you into kink, Thatcher?” she asked with mock suspicion.

“Maybe. You scared?”

She snorted, keeping up the banter to cover the pain and helplessness. “In your dreams, Sergeant.”

“Naw, I’m pretty sure my dreams are too X-rated for the likes of you, Lieutenant,” he fired back.

“I’ll consider myself forewarned then.” She was smiling now, in spite of her torn lip and throbbing cheekbone, feeling lighter inside. God, she wanted to get them out of here. But how? There was no chance if they kept them confined and isolated like this. Both she and Jackson had tried kicking at the locks of their cages and gotten precisely nowhere. She’d almost vomited at the pain of the effort.

A hollow silence settled between them, and she realized with a start that Haversham had stopped screaming at some point during the conversation. Had they finished torturing him, or had he...

She blocked out the horrific thoughts threatening to bombard her, the continual pain streaking along her face, ribs and wrist, the low-grade nausea and the incessant noisy gurgle of her ravenous stomach. Instead she closed her eyes and conjured up an image of her and Jackson lying on the beach while the surf rolled in. Just like a scene out of a postcard she’d seen. The breeze would be warm and salt-tinged. She could almost feel it on her face, hear the rustle of the palm trees swaying overhead.

Except it wasn’t the sound of rustling palm trees she heard now. It was shoes shuffling over the dirt floor. Someone was running down the corridor. She could hear muffled shouts from outside, loud voices as they swept into the corridor and down to where the interrogation room lay. At least two men were barking orders, others rushing to do their bidding.

Her eyes sprang open when she recognized the thud of booted feet heading their way. She held her breath, making herself as still as she could, praying the person wasn’t coming for her or Jackson. But the rapid footsteps came nearer. Two sets. They passed Jackson’s cell.

She was the only other person down this far.

Her heart hammered as alarm streaked through her, her bravado evaporating under a rush of sheer terror.
Not again.
She couldn’t do this again. Sweat broke out across her skin, panic clawing at her insides.

The man at her cage door flicked on a flashlight, and everything in her went icy cold when she recognized Khalid’s yellow eyes staring down at her. They gleamed with resolve and barely concealed anticipation.

“Your Defense Secretary is a very brave man,” he said, loud enough for Jackson to hear him, “but now we have run out of time. Since he refuses to give us the statement even under torture, it seems I must try a different approach. I’ve decided we’ll play a little game. One I learned from my infidel father’s people.”

Her mind whirred too fast to make sense of that chilling statement, but her gaze locked on his right hand as he brought it to his waist and patted something at his belt. In the glint of the flashlight, she recognized the shape. An old revolver. She recognized it as Russian.

Her mind rewound his words and rapidly replayed them, trying to decipher what he meant. A game he’d learned from the Russians? What the hell did that mean?

He began unlocking her cage door, and finally the pieces suddenly fit together into a single, terrifying realization.

The crazy
hijo de puta
thought he was going to make them play Russian roulette.

Any bravery she’d managed to build back up drained out of her in a terrified riptide. She scrambled back against the rear of her cage, baring her teeth in helpless defiance as he reached in for her.

She reared away when he grabbed her right upper arm and started dragging her forward. Maya dug in her feet and snarled, swallowing down the jagged scream rising up her throat. He yanked. She lashed out with her boots, enduring the knifelike agony in her ribs and wrist to catch him in the gut. But there was nowhere to go and her satisfaction was short-lived. He hauled her out with one fist, yanking his head back just in time to avoid the back of her head when she flung it at his chin.

His quiet chuckle brushed against the back of her neck as he brought her flush against his body. It felt like he was made of pure steel, and she didn’t have a prayer against him with her hands and feet bound. He propelled her in front of him almost effortlessly, her struggles futile.
No.
No!

Something inside her snapped.

“
No más
,
no más!
” Her frantic scream shattered the darkness, the terror suffocating, dragging her down and stealing her breath. She panicked, fought for air.

“Maya!” She heard Jackson’s desperate shout, couldn’t find the breath she needed to answer.

Khalid muscled her down the corridor past Jackson’s cell, and she caught only a glimpse of the naked fear on his face before she was dragged past him toward her death.

Chapter Thirteen

Cam trudged into his barracks in the PJ area of the SPEC OPS compound at Bagram and dropped the remainder of his gear beside his bunk. It was the middle of the night and even though he was exhausted after being out on an op for the past thirty-two hours, he knew he’d never be able to sleep. Not now.

“Hey. What’s the word?”

He turned to find Ryan Wentworth coming through the doorway. Went was dressed in full kit and his face was cammied up, ready to head out on his own mission. “No joy,” Cam said. “We were close though.” Like, less than an hour close to Jackson and the others. “Must have just missed them.”

That was the most frustrating part. The fire pits in the militant’s camp had still been warm, their cooking utensils left behind in their haste to escape. They couldn’t have gone far, yet despite the CSAR team’s best efforts and high-tech equipment, they’d managed to elude them. How the hell had they done it?

“Fuck, that sucks,” Went muttered.

“Yeah.” It weighed heavy on Cam’s shoulders. He’d already lost one of his best friends over here, at the end of last summer. He’d been part of the honor guard at the ramp ceremony and had accompanied Ty’s body home stateside. Cam never wanted to have to do that again, let alone with the guy he’d worked beside for the better part of a year now. Jackson was one of the best guys Cam had ever met. Wentworth too, despite his penchant for being a pain in the ass. “You guys heading out soon?”

“Mission brief in twenty minutes. You going out again tonight?”

“I asked my commander to let us have another go, but he shot me down until at least tomorrow night. The way things are going, it looks like I’ll be part of the rescue but not part of the search.” He wished like hell it could be otherwise.

“One of us will find them,” Ryan said, the “us” referring to one of the American units either en route or already out looking in the area where intelligence had pinpointed the prisoners’ supposed location.

Cam knew a unit would eventually find them. He just prayed they found them before the bastards who’d taken them started killing the prisoners to gain fame and political status. “Hope you have better luck hunting than we did. Thatcher’s sisters have been emailing me every few hours since they were informed last night that he’s missing.” And he couldn’t tell them a goddamn thing, due to OPSEC and a lot of other reasons. Best he could do was reassure them the American military was doing everything possible to bring Jackson back safely.

Ryan leaned against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest. “Sucks all around, man. I know they’re a tight family.”

Cam nodded. He was beat and in need of some rack time but he still planned to call Dev. He just needed to hear her voice, even though he couldn’t tell her what was going on. She’d have heard something on the news by now and know something was up. She also understood that most of the time he couldn’t tell her anything. It was a big part of the reason he’d fallen for her so hard.

“Command’s got everyone out looking for them,” Ryan said. “They won’t stay hidden for long.”

Yeah, but running clandestine ops across the Pakistani border was a giant pain in the ass for all involved. All they needed now was for the Pakistani government to find out and throw up a bunch of political red tape to slow their progress. And if that happened, the captors would have plenty of time to vanish out there in no-man’s-land. With every hour the prisoners went undetected, the chance of that happening increased exponentially.

“Bring ’em all home,” he said to Ryan.

“Do our best. Later, man,” he replied, turning away from the doorway.

Flopping back on his bunk, Cam rubbed a hand over his gritty eyes and pulled out the sat phone he’d borrowed to call Devon. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said when she answered.

“Hey! You okay? It’s the middle of the night there.”

“Yeah. Just wanted to hear your voice.”

A pause, and he knew she’d put it all together without him having to say a word. Dev knew him so well already. “Okay. Want me to distract you for a bit?”

“That’d be awesome.” He cast a quick glance about the room, making sure he was alone to keep the ribbing from the other guys to a minimum. “Hey, Dev?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” He made sure he told her every time they spoke, just in case. Life was unpredictable as hell over here, something they all were aware of.

A soft chuckle. “I know, and I love you back. So, I saw the news about the Sec Def. You getting any sleep over there these days?”

She had no idea that Jackson and Maya were two of the hostages. He could picture her so clearly, stretched out on the couch beneath her living room window at her place near Seattle. She’d have her left leg propped up on some pillows, the brace wrapped around her healing knee. Her chin-length black hair would be tucked behind her ears and the Pararescue mug he’d given her would be on the coffee table beside her. “Some.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you watch yourself out there. Okay, you wanted a distraction, so lie down and close your eyes while I tell you about my latest physio appointments. If that doesn’t put you to sleep I don’t know what will, so if you nod off, I won’t hold it against you.”

She was so low maintenance. “Sounds good to me.”

A short pause. “Cam?”

“Yeah?”

“I know you guys’ll find them and get them out of there.”

The absolute conviction in her voice made him smile. “Damn right, we will.” He only hoped it would be a rescue mission rather than a recovery.

* * *

Jackson’s heart was in his throat when someone returned for him a minute after Maya had passed his cell. He wasn’t afraid for himself. He was afraid for what would happen to her. That stricken look on her face had twisted an invisible knife embedded in his chest.

“Come.” Mohammed beckoned to him, standing back from the door.

For the first time since they’d captured him, Jackson couldn’t get to the interrogation room fast enough. He shot of out his cage, nearly falling when the ties around his ankles hobbled him. Following right on Mohammed’s heels into the other room, he breathed out a sigh of relief and said a silent prayer of thanks when he saw that Maya was still okay. She blanched when he entered, her eyes wide. Doug was slumped against the wall where the men had left him after cutting him free of the chair. His eyes were closed, both swelling shut, and blood leaked from his nose and mouth to trail into the black stubble covering his dark face. His white undershirt was soaked through with blood, sweat and vomit. He seemed to be barely conscious.

Shit, what were these assholes going to do to them now? That Khalid guy had mentioned something about a game, but Jackson had no idea what it meant. He was pretty sure this was a last-minute invitation to the party, and they hadn’t intended him to be present for whatever they had planned.

Preparing himself for the worst, he waited to find out what they wanted from him.

Khalid stood in the center of the room, watching him with intent, hostile eyes. The other four men in the room all wore black balaclavas to hide their faces, but not him. He indicated Haversham with an impatient nod. “Do what you need to wake him up. I need him alert.”

Alert for what? So they could torture him all over again? Fuck that. Locking his jaw, Jackson cut a quick glance at Maya before turning his attention back to Haversham. Mohammed stepped up behind him to cut his hands free and for just a moment Jackson seriously contemplated attacking. He held off only because he worried about what would happen to Maya after they killed him. Because if he tried anything now, he’d be shot down in seconds.

Instead, he made himself take a calming breath and sank to his knees in front of his fellow prisoner. One of the other men dropped the medical bag next to him. The first thing Jackson did was check Doug’s carotid pulse, finding it fast and thready.

Peeling off the stained shirt, he stilled when he saw the burn marks on the man’s chest. They weren’t serious in medical terms, but they had to hurt like hell, and any open wound in this filthy environment could easily lead to infection. Jackson had scorch marks of his own on his chest from the electrical instrument they’d used on him, but nothing like these.

He did what he could for the burns, applying topical antibiotic cream and taping bandages in place over the raw skin. Haversham’s lids barely flickered in response. When Jackson lifted them to check for a pupillary response, he was relieved to see them react to the light in the room, constricting quick and evenly. They hadn’t damaged his brain, at least. And the captors expected Jackson to revive him? They were all dehydrated, starving, exhausted and dealing with the aftereffects of the torture they’d been subjected to. Would be better for Haversham to stay in a near-unconscious state, rather than wake up and go through more hell.

“He’s not responding,” he told Khalid flatly.

“You will wake him. Now.”

“What do you expect me to do? He’s practically unconscious.”

Khalid yanked a pistol from the man closest to him and pulled the slide back, raising it to point directly at Maya. “Wake him, or I kill her.” His expression was implacable, and Jackson knew he’d do it.

Fucking pathetic asshole.
The threat against Maya was enough to take his attitude down a notch. He cupped Haversham’s bloody, scruffy cheeks in his hands. “Hey, Doug. Can you hear me? Wake up. You gotta wake up, man.” His nape prickled with the knowledge that the weapon was still pointed at Maya’s head. He gave Haversham a little shake, spoke louder. “Come on, Doug, you have to open your eyes.” When that didn’t work, urgency drove him to smack one hand against the stubbled cheek he cradled. “
Wake up.
”

Haversham’s eyelids fluttered. He struggled to open them, blinking up at Jackson in confusion. A pained groan escaped his cracked lips.

Thank God.
“That’s right, come on back.”

His eyes focused slowly, taking Jackson in first. When he looked to the side and saw all the masked men standing around the room, he went rigid, a sheen of sweat breaking out over his face.

Jackson hated being responsible for making him endure more of this bullshit. “Sorry, man.” He eased back and threw a pointed glare over his shoulder at Khalid, who lowered the weapon and handed it back to the man next to him. Jackson’s heart rate slowed. He didn’t dare look back at Maya as a suffocating silence filled the room. Jackson refused to let them see his anxiety. They’d feed on it, ramp up their efforts to break him in front of the others.

Khalid kept staring at him, and Jackson stared right back. It was the only show of defiance he could give right now. So, he challenged him with his eyes, wanting whatever the sadist had in mind to be done to him, rather than Maya or Haversham. Compared to them, Jackson was in perfect health. He held that evil gaze.
What now?

A cold, cruel light entered Khalid’s eyes. He jerked his head to the side, indicating a spot between Maya and Haversham. “Get over there and sit down.”

Though everything in him rebelled at following the command, he had no choice. Rising from his knees, he stopped when Mohammed approached and reached for one of his wrists. The muscles in his arm tensed, wanting to strike. Needing to. His nostrils flared, a molten anger igniting in his blood. It took everything he had to remain still and allow the kid to secure his wrists behind his back yet again.

Once it was done, he shuffled stiffly to his place against the wall, filled with loathing for the men holding them and for the powerlessness he felt in that moment. Sinking into position a few feet away from Maya, he could feel her fearful gaze on him and the rage faded, replaced by growing despair. He stole a glance at her with his peripheral vision. If there was a way to save her by offering his life for hers, he’d do it.

That others may live
wasn’t just a motto he lived by as a PJ. It was everything he stood for. And if he was going to die saving a life today, he wanted it to be Maya’s.

Cold settled over him. Whenever he’d thought about the end over the past couple of days, he’d always envisioned himself fighting right until his last breath. Sitting on the hard-packed floor waiting for whatever happened next, he was filled with the awful realization that he’d just submitted to his death instead.

* * *

The PJ’s dark eyes blazed with loathing and defiance as he lowered into position between the other prisoners. Though he was bound, Khalid watched him closely, trusting him least of all. This soldier was the biggest threat to them, with the Defense Secretary practically senseless and the female so battered. She sat rigidly against the wall, definitely afraid, dried tear marks staining her face, raspy breaths catching in her throat. No threat to him in a physical sense, even if she hadn’t been restrained.

And yet she remained impressively strong, despite her injuries. She’d fought him every step of the way down the corridor, somehow understanding what he intended for her and the others. Khalid took note of the dried blood on her mouth and chin, the end of the crude cardboard splint supporting her bound wrist, the guarded way she held herself.

As they made eye contact, the look that flashed in her eyes took him by surprise and gave him pause. It was more than hatred. It was pure determination. Perhaps he’d underestimated her, with her smaller size and weak female body. Aside from the physical damage and fatigue, she was still willing to fight and would do so the second she had the opportunity. Khalid didn’t plan on giving her one. Not her, nor any of the others.

Ignoring the lingering vestiges of disquiet plaguing him, he paused a moment to collect himself and clear his mind. The camera was recording on the other side of the room. He’d ordered his men to cover their faces so they couldn’t be identified later, but the captives had already seen his own. Khalid couldn’t see their expressions, but he felt his men’s disapproval. It pervaded the entire room like a toxic fog. A spurt of alarm hit him, the sense that he was losing his men’s loyalty making his pulse quicken.

He’d fought for the chance to lead his own men and now that he stood on the brink of clinching their support, he risked alienating them forever. “Let us begin.”